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US fat cats demand cuts to poor people

As the White House begins a series of meetings today on the looming “fiscal cliff,” a coalition of the largest corporate firms and advocacy groups is lobbying for wide-ranging cuts in government spending, including to programs like Medicare and Social Security.

The group, which includes 80 of the country’s most powerful CEOs, is called The Campaign to Fix the Debt. It was co-founded by former Clinton White House chief of staff, Erskine Bowles, and former Republican Sen. Alan Simpson, previously the co-chairs of President Obama’s bipartisan National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform. Critics have accused the group of using the budget crisis to push for corporate tax cuts.

We are joined by Sarah Anderson, director of the Global Economy project at the Institute for Policy Studies and co-author of the new report, “The CEO Campaign to ‘Fix’ the Debt: A Trojan Horse for Massive Corporate Tax Breaks.”

CEO Council Demands Cuts To Poor, Elderly While Reaping Billions In Government Contracts, Tax Breaks

11/25/2012 10:31 am EST

WASHINGTON — The corporate CEOs who have made a high-profile foray into deficit negotiations have themselves been substantially responsible for the size of the deficit they now want closed.

The companies represented by executives working with the Campaign To Fix The Debt have received trillions in federal war contracts, subsidies and bailouts, as well as specialized tax breaks and loopholes that virtually eliminate the companies’ tax bills.

The CEOs are part of a campaign run by the Peter Peterson-backed Center for a Responsible Federal Budget, which plans to spend at least $30 million pushing for a deficit reduction deal in the lame-duck session and beyond.

During the past few days, CEOs belonging to what the campaign calls its CEO Fiscal Leadership Council — most visibly, Goldman Sachs‘ Lloyd Blankfein and Honeywell‘s David Cote — have barnstormed the media, making the case that the only way to cut the deficit is to severely scale back social safety-net programs — Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security — which would disproportionately impact the poor and the elderly.

As part of their push, they are advocating a “territorial tax system” that would exempt their companies’ foreign profits from taxation, netting them about $134 billion in tax savings, according to a new report from the Institute for Policy Studies titled “The CEO Campaign to ‘Fix’ the Debt: A Trojan Horse for Massive Corporate Tax Breaks” — money that could help pay off the federal budget deficit.

Yet the CEOs are not offering to forgo federal money or pay a higher tax rate, on their personal income or corporate profits. Instead, council recommendations include cutting “entitlement” programs, as well as what they call “low-priority spending.”

Many of the companies recommending austerity would be out of business without the heavy federal support they get, including Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase, which both received billions in direct bailout cash, plus billions more indirectly through AIG and other companies taxpayers rescued.

24 thoughts on “US fat cats demand cuts to poor people”

The problem here is that you are shooting the messenger without reading the message.

Social Security’s finances are in trouble – that fact comes from the Trustees not Lloyd Blankenfeld who is echoing the message. The article mentions Lloyd because he is a slime, and they want to talk about the degree to which he is a slime rather than whether Social Security can meet its promises.

Sorry I misspelled his name, but not his character. This is the guy who described taking TARP relief as ‘Doing God’s Work’. I kid you not. He isn’t a vocal lobbyist for Social Security cuts. He is the head of Goldman Sachs.

He is repeating what the Trustees have said. Are you suggesting that they are part of the lobby for Social Security cuts?

The subject of the article which I quoted is not what the trustees say or did not say, what might be the background of that, etc.

Did it ever occur to Social Security cuts lobbyists that the US budget problems might be caused, more than by Social Security, by war in Iraq, war in Afghanistan, war in Pakistan, war in Somalia, war in Libya, maybe next month war in Iran, war in you name it; and/or the big bank bailouts for people like Lloyd Blankfein? Lloyd Blankfein, of the CEO Fiscal Leadership Council of the Center for a Responsible Federal Budget, and as such a very visible and audible Social Security cuts lobbyist.

You last comment simply takes me back to the original comment. You are shooting the messenger and not paying attention to the message.

I hope those who are arguing for Social Security reform entirely ignore the connection between US budget problems and all of these wars. Wars have nothing to do with the problems in Social Security. The problem in Social Security is that it generates more promises than it can fill.

The Trustees say that Social Security has 20.5 trillion in unfunded obligations. You apparently want to conflate the issue with wars which do not get funded by payroll taxes or receive funding from the Trust Fund.

I agree with you about the problems for the government’s spending. We are spending 700 billion on defense. But spending less there doesn’t change the finances of Social Security.

“I hope those who are arguing for Social Security reform entirely ignore the connection between US budget problems and all of these wars.”

As quite some of the prominent fat cats in the CEO Fiscal Leadership Council of the Center for a Responsible Federal Budget make lots of money from the US federal contracts connected with those wars, while US soldiers keep dying thousands of miles away from home, that connection IS there, whether those CEOs ignore it or not.

They attack Social Security AS PART OF THE FEDERAL BUDGET. While not only ignoring those wars and their relationship to the budget, but also the enormous federal bailouts of the financial sector of 2008 and later, which helped them, but which hardly helped the budget deficit 🙂

I appreciate your comment on where to organize. I can’t support anything that comes from AARP. They do not maintain the integrity of the debate. They promote noise in the debate that negatively affects their core audience. The Trustees have said that the status quo means that anyone 63 or younger will live longer than Social Security pays full-benefits. The organization does not serve this audience. It is an integrity issue for me.

You are much like this article. You want to conflate issues that aren’t related. If we spend less on the wars, our deficit is lower and Social Security is not better off.

You want to change the discussion from whether Social Security is in trouble to something that is completely unrelated. Whether it comes from Lloyd or from the Trustees, Social Security’s finances are in trouble and changing the subject is the objective.

AND NOW A WORD FROM A POOR ELDERLY KNOW-NOTHING: President Obama had his chance to accept the Bowles/Simpson recommendations (or part of them if that is what he wished to do). He did not. So now there is a “Campaign for Sanity” as I call the subject group of CEOs. There is a lack of capital in the USA for many reasons. We need to allow capital back into the USA for investment in new businesses or R&D for established businesses. That is why we should ensure there are lower taxes for the repatriation of this money.
NOW FOR THE “POOR OLD ME” part of my comments. I and many other senior citizens are receiving way to much in the way of Medicare and Social Security. I am not a rich man but I have plenty of food on the table and my family doctor bills are minimal (due to Medicare). I could take a cut of 5% on both handouts (and they are handouts) and still live comfortable. Not rich, just comfortable. Now if every one of us old codgers would do that we could put a dent in our SPENDING PROBLEM. Why does the government hand us money that we do not need?
Don’t cry for me Argentina – – – or – – – Huffington Post or any other “news” outlet that just loves to stir up trouble.

Two things. First, Simpson Bowles didn’t cut benefits for seniors. It cut benefits for future seniors. In general politicians do not fix problems which they can say do not exist. Specifically, he said that Social Security was – you know – structurally sound. He got elected on that message – so in his mind there is no problem.

Second, I applaud your willing to be part of the solution. Now if we can get the other 299,999,999 of us to join you.

Waldo, Thanks. I stay away from solution-sided organizations. If you agree with them, I urge you to join.

My basic problem with solutions-sided groups, is that America has yet to acknowledge that there is a problem. In the last election, we had a choice between two candidates both of whom said that Social Security was structurally sound. That is laughable.

I think that the debate has become stalemated in a polarized debate because the media doesn’t do its job. There is no honesty today in the debate. Opponents simply make-up ‘facts’. Social Security doesn’t add a penny to the deficit. On the other side, privatization supporters hide the cost of what they are proposing. When you don’t have facts as a fabric for the debate, it will degenerate into polarized stalemate.